Make with the art
Decider surveys Gallery Night
Scott Gordon
From Dreamlover by Katarina Riesing
Madison’s Gallery Night drew aesthetical seekers, yuppies, and apparently a thief or two to local art spaces on Friday, May 2. Decider sorted through the rewards and the disappointments, the masterstrokes and the absurdities.
State Street Gallery (109 State St.) is the destination spot for people who don’t know anything about art but know what they like—especially if that happens to include a $4,000 sculpture of three cows at a baseball game. Such is the charm and frustration of Gallery Night—stuff like this gets promoted alongside challenging wonders like the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art’s (227 State St.) Altered Geometry: Contemporary Sculpture From MMoCA’s Collection. Linked through the use of basic domestic materials (wood, cloth, glass, plastic wrap, metal), a very limited color palette (brown, white, cream, black), and a sense of distorted scale, the sculptures are beautiful in their simplicity.
State Street Gallery (109 State St.) is the destination spot for people who don’t know anything about art but know what they like—especially if that happens to include a $4,000 sculpture of three cows at a baseball game. Such is the charm and frustration of Gallery Night—stuff like this gets promoted alongside challenging wonders like the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art’s (227 State St.) Altered Geometry: Contemporary Sculpture From MMoCA’s Collection. Linked through the use of basic domestic materials (wood, cloth, glass, plastic wrap, metal), a very limited color palette (brown, white, cream, black), and a sense of distorted scale, the sculptures are beautiful in their simplicity.
Especially intriguing is a sculpture by Donald Lipski called “The East,” made from yards and yards of plastic wrap stretched over a steel mooring buoy. The buoy gives the sculpture an obvious heaviness; at the same time, it’s suspended within the layers of plastic wrap, creating an ethereal effect of depth and luminosity.
Fresh Hot Press, UW’s printmaking club, brings a lively show of student work to Overture Center Galleries II and III (201 State St.). The show is all over the place thematically, and many pieces have a sense of humor, such as Tyler Robbins’ “Kingsford Is God,” an oversized color print of a grill engulfed in flames. Too bad these galleries are so viewer-unfriendly—they’re basically dead-end hallways. The only other people here are two janitors.
The cavernous halls and workspaces of Winnebago Studios (2046 Winnebago St.) keep people wandering and seeking instead of immediately forming those chit-chatting, backs-to-the-art groups so depressingly common at art openings. The most striking work on display is photographer Eric Tadsen’s series on decaying fertilizer and feed plants. Tadsen tackles his hulking subjects with a superb eye for shadows, rust, and improbable beauty. Down the hall, woodworker Tom Loeser’s “Ladderbackkcabreddal” comes off as perversely witty: It’s a rocking chair whose back extends up into the seat and legs of a non-rocking chair, facing in the opposite direction. “It’s reversible,” Loeser explains.
Though Project Lodge (817 E. Johnson St.) isn’t officially participating in Gallery Night, it seems the most likely to draw in anyone who should randomly pass by: The pig-snouted brunette woman staring out of the front window exerts a disturbing allure. For her Master of Fine Arts exhibition, Masked, Melissa Cooke bought a bunch of animal masks at the zoo, photographed herself wearing them, and used the images for large-scale drawings in stark and lifelike graphite. It can take a few moments of staring to figure out where the mask ends and the person begins: Her expressions and postures meld into the roles of tiger, donkey, bird, and even butterfly.
At Commonwealth Gallery (100 S. Baldwin St.), Katarina Riesing’s show Dreamlover includes a video installation that turns Riesing into a violently warped cast of music-video caricatures. Lip-synching to a rotation of Mariah, Britney, and the like, she makes flirtatious eyes at the camera, her face incongruously smeared with blood; or gasps under a plastic sheet with black Xs taped over her eyes. In the parking lot, the Curved Collective artists arrive with a show in the back of a roving U-Haul truck, having been chased from a spot on Johnson Street and another stop near the Overture Center. Inside, cardboard snowflakes hang from the ceiling, and there’s a creepy-cute sort of altar with a porcelain kitty on it.
Studio Paran (2051 Winnebago St.) glassblower Richard Jones makes his living creating elaborate vases, bowls, and bottles, and marks the evening with a more conceptual effort, Tokonoma. Glass domes sit over moss and smooth black rocks, and clear orbs hang from the ceiling, one of them containing a goldfish.
At Monroe Street’s Janus Galleries (2701 Monroe St.), a moneyed crowd takes in a large collection of paintings by Seattle-based artist Lois Silver. Using only her index finger, Silver paints up to 20 layers on each canvas, creating a vibrant, rich tone. Her dark and brooding scenes are reminiscent of Edward Hopper, but the bright colors add an element of grotesque humor.
The uninspired presentation at Monroe Street Framing (1901 Monroe St.) belies some strong photography from Richard Quinney. His photos of abandoned farms—like a scene of an old bicycle with two flat tires sinking into the dirt floor of a shed—have a quiet sense of desertion and loneliness. It proves a little hard to take in while listening to plastic-surgery ads blaring from the radio station tuned in to provide background music.
DJ Nick Nice provides easy-listening beats for the younger bunch at Ma Cha Teahouse and Gallery (1934 Monroe St.), temporary home to Nina Bednarski’s show Endangered Beauty, comprising plant paintings and silk-screens inspired by old seed catalogs and images distilled from photos she took at Olbrich Gardens. Halfway through the evening, the mellow teahouse scene turns Pink Panther when Bednarksi notices that two of her paintings are missing.
Yong Kim’s “Dreaming Heads” stand out as the most innovative pieces at the Higher Fire Clay Studio (2132 Regent St.). Turquoise glaze runs down the heads of these sleeping warriors, their closed eyes oblivious to the granola-crunch crowd tearing into a nearby fruit tray.
Chiripa (636 S. Park St.) cuts out the middleman by buying art directly from its makers in Mexico and the Americas. Chiripa is featuring lead-free pottery right now in an effort to steer the Mexican industry away from unregulated lead-based glazes. Art created for charitable outsiders often has a sloppy or gratuitous look to it, but these clay works are inventive and expertly crafted. Platters painted with peyote-inspired dream animals have a wild, consciousness-expanding feel.
